Share this:

From the editors of MAKE magazine, the Maker Pro Newsletter is about the impact of makers on business and technology. Our coverage includes hardware startups, new products, incubators, and innovators, along with technology and market trends.

Are you a Maker Pro? We’re compiling a list of Maker Pro Twitter handles, so please send us yours. Subscribe to the Maker Pro Twitter list here.

The News, Briefly

* MAKE’s week-long Connected Home series, which comes to an end tomorrow (Friday, Feb. 7) has been a reality check on the ever-evolving concept of the Internet of Things. A good place to start: Alasdair Allan’s (@aallan) The Trouble with Things. His astute analysis of a major problem with IoT: “Instead of talking to each other, everything is talking to you.”

* Afinia has lawyered up and responded aggressively to the Stratasys patent infringement lawsuit with claims that could have implications for the entire 3D printing industry, says Michael Weinberg (@MWeinbergPK) in MAKE.

* Speaking of Stratasys, Bloombergreports that the company might be scooped up by one of the large 2D printing companies, HP or Seiko Epson.

* The Pebble watch app store is now open, with a feature that other hardware designers might want to copy: a “locker” that allows users to store their apps online, since only 8 third-party apps can be stored on the watch at one time. Computerworld reports that wearable apps are expected to grow dramatically, for all sorts of devices.

Ebersweiler and Joffe have a lively way of presenting the challenges that face hardware entrepreneurs, demonstrated in the two previous installments of their Lean Hardware series.

This latest episode takes your product through the swoosh of the automatic doors that lead into retail: Best Buy, Walmart, and the many smaller venues where your product will be expected to dance and sing.

This post is an overview of what it will take to succeed on that stage: from new, possibly unfamiliar, concepts like “demand creation,” to timeless principles such as “your customers are your best investors.”

Autodesk’s Carl Bass: The Maker Connection

If you want to know why Autodesk has so many maker-oriented programs and investments, look no further than this profile of Autodesk CEO Carl Bass (@carlbass) in his home workshop. Attendees at last spring’s Maker Faire Bay Area may have already made the connection, if they caught Bass’ casual, energetic, enthusiastic talk about CAD and kids.

Lessons From a Manufacturing Adventure

Sparse’s front light.

A little over a year ago, a group of designers, under the name Sparse, successfully completed a Kickstarter campaign to fund the development of a couple of bike lights: front and rear. They raised $66k, well above their $45k goal.

Now that delivery is looming, one of the founders has reflected on the group’s efforts “to create a real company and not just (the world’s most infuriating) hobby.”

One hard-earned lesson: as a scrappy startup, you are “last in line” at your factory, behind big, established customers. Get used to getting bumped.

Thinking About Your Next Controller?

A digital prototype of the OpenBCI 3D-Printable Headset

Maybe you will soon be able to monitor your thoughts on the topic.

OpenBCI, an “open source brain interface for makers,” more than doubled its goal on Kickstarter, netting $215k.

Brain-computer interfacing (BCI) is a relatively new field of science with a wide range of potential applications. Medical grade BCIs are often used in assisting people with damage to their cognitive or sensory-motor functions.

OpenBCI is hoping to take this technology out of medical facilities and labs and make it a bigger part of our everyday lives, revolutionizing neural gaming, meditation aids, toys, tools, and devices.

First showcased at World Maker Faire New York 2013, OpenBCI has since held their first hackathon, in November 2013, and they hope to expand the OpenBCI community by coordinating future hackathons and connecting the technology with more open-source hardware and software.

The kit, which hovers around the $325 range, will start shipping in April of this year.

Events

Hardware Startup Engineering Summit

San Jose, Calif., April 1–2

Designed “for engineers who want to create a new market, disrupt an existing one, or learn more about the agile product development strategies employed by successful hardware startups today.” Prices start at $795. More information here.